Human Capital (***1/2)

A must-see for fans of parallel storylines…. Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) is a social-climbing real-estate investor who can’t wait to buy into a hedge fund run by his wealthy new friend, Giovanni (Fabrizio Gifuni), whose teenaged son is dating Dino’s daughter Serena. The movie begins, almost, with Dino’s story, but then retells the story from two other points of view, starting with Giovanni’s wife (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), who spends her days shopping, but once dreamed of a career in theater.

The film’s central event is a bicycle rider’s collision with an SUV on a dark highway near Milan. Besides the mystery of who the driver was, the title suggests the greater theme of money. Social class is only a subtext, but it’s a big part of what’s intriguing about the film, a seamless adaptation by director Paolo Virzì of a novel by American writer Stephen Amidon.

IMDb link

viewed 10/20/14 3:20 pm at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival]

The Great Beauty (**)

“A feast for the eyes” (or senses) and “a love letter to Rome” are the two obvious accolades that came to mind as I watched this lengthy Italian drama, and, sure enough, a Google search revealed both phrases as frequently used descriptors. They’re phrases one might well use on a thinly plotted mood piece such as this, were one trying to compliment it. Or one might compare its auteur, Paolo Sorrentino, to his revered countryman, Federico Fellini. In any case, Sorrentino has a flair for the visually arresting. Whether in long shots of singing nuns in ancient edifices or dizzying close-ups of dancers in a club, as in two lengthy opening sequences, he gives you the sense of being a voyeur. In more than one scene, characters intently watch others for the simple delight of observing. And that is what this film is like.

At the center of all this is Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), who at 65 is undergoing a self reevaluation. The author of one acclaimed novel in his younger days, he’s made his living since then with celebrity interviews and profiles of weird performance artists. Lots of scenes open with incongruous shots of, say, a nude woman hitting her head against a wall. Jeff himself is a voyeur by both profession and inclination. As to why he has never written another novel, he says it’s because he like to party too much. Not married, he spends his days as a younger man Mike, hanging out in clubs, picking up much younger women, sleeping late, and so on. In the course of several days, he does all of this, has off-kilter conversations with his housekeeper, and meets with old friends.

Parts of this film grabbed me, as when Jep forces his interview subject, the naked head-banger, to explain her meaningless. But this is a self-contained scene; it exemplifies the sometimes brutally candid approach to life but is not a significant plot point. After a succession of such disconnected segments, the movie began to seem long. Also, I don’t necessarily mind a weird movie, or one that mixes in some fantasy sequences, but this movie at times has a kind of studied weirdness that put me off. An example is when Jep gets into an elevator and asks the man next to him about his suit, but the man says nothing. In another segment, Jep delivers a sermon on proper funeral etiquette while watching his love interest try on dresses in the distance. Maybe he’s talking to her, maybe to the audience, maybe to himself, but this seemed odd for the sake of oddness. We are all voyeurs when we watch movies, hoping to see some version of truth, and this movie struck me as a version of something else.


IMDb link

viewed 1/15/14 7:30 at Ritz Bourse; posted 1/20/14

Reality (***)

Some things are nearly universal, and the Big Brother show, which began in the Netherlands and quickly spread across six continents, is one of them. Big Brother and other reality television shows offers ordinary people with nothing but big personalities a shot at stardom and viewers the chance to observe the hidden behavior of ordinary people. Yet the very fact of being observed alters behavior. It is that reality, not reality television, that is the subject of this movie.

The big personality belongs to Luciano (Aniello Arena), a Neapolitan fishmonger with a loving wife, children, and extended family. He’s also running some kind of scam involving reselling kitchen “robots” that I didn’t exactly understand. It’s his large family that persuades him to try out for Big Brother, but pretty soon it’s Luciano who becomes captivated by the idea of being selected. Is the woman who’s come all the way from Rome to buy his fish really someone from the television program checking him out? Is he truly worthy of being a TV celebrity? Will his small-screen dreams make him miss the big picture? Matteo Garrone, whose previous film was the Mafia drama Gomorrah, keeps things lighter here, though with a touch of pathos, and only modestly comedic. He bookends the film with visually inspired long shots that suggest that life, like reality television, is a bit of a construction in which each of us is producer and star.

IMDb link

viewed 4/10/13 7:05 at Ritz Bourse

To Rome with Love (**)

As its title suggests, Woody Allen’s paean to the Eternal City falls on the frivolous side of his oeuvre. Using the bookending device of a narrating traffic officer, he introduces to not one but four unconnected stories. In one, Woody Allen plays a kvetchy maestro who thinks his daughter’s prospective father-in-law, heard singing opera in the shower, might be a star in the making. In another, Roberto Begnini plays an office clerk bewildered by his sudden celebrity. This is one of two storylines with no American characters; in the other, newlyweds get separated; she meets celebrities and he meets a prostitute (Penélope Cruz) who mistakes him for a client.

Finally, in the only all-American story, architect Jesse Eisenberg meets an architect he idolizes (Alec Baldwin), then falls for his girlfriend’s (Greta Gerwig) visiting pal (Ellen Page), a flighty actress, even though an imaginary version of Baldwin’s character keeps telling him she’s bad news. What’s worse is that she’s really irritating, so it seems completely contrived that he would find her irresistible.

Unfortunately, “contrived” pretty much describes this movie as a whole, which seems like a grab bag of featherweight ideas Woody had lying around. The Roberto Begnini segment is of course intentionally contrived and is a mildly amusing critique of media-created celebrity. Judy Davis, playing the wife who has to put up with Allen’s character, is pretty amusing, but the segment itself is silly. There are a few decent one-liners, but even those are sort of predictable. (Woman admiring Michelangelo’s ceiling on the Sistine Chapel: “Can you imagine working on your back like that?”; prostitute (Cruz): “I can.”)


Allen’s last European adventure, Midnight in Paris, was also lightweight, but was sometimes clever and had characters worth watching, so its unexpected box-office success made sense. Notwithstanding some good opera singing and nice footage of tourist sites, this is easily his worst movie since Hollywood Ending.

IMDb link

viewed 7/21/12 12:20 pm at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/21/12

We Have a Pope (***)

As the film begins, the cardinals gather to choose a successor to the late pontiff. Not me, many of them silently pray.

We may doubt the capabilities of our presidents and prime ministers to lead, but they themselves never seem to. But what of a pope, elected without a campaign? Could it be that the man chosen might find himself ill-prepared and not up to the job? This is the basis of this gently comedic film in which Michel Piccoli plays the temperamentally unsuitable compromise candidate, a frustrated actor with the role of his life, and stage fright.

The premise seems farcical, or satirical, but the approach taken here is otherwise. It may not be Vatican approved, but it’s not too likely to offend the faithful. Piccoli brings a dignity to his role as one befuddled by his unexpected fortune. Meanwhile, the Vatican is in limbo. What should the public be told? Might a therapist help? While the reluctant pontiff tries to recall his past, the nonbelieving psychologist (Nanni Moretti, also the film’s director) finds himself strangely at home among the holy men. This is a very slight film, but it’s a pleasant one.

IMDb link

viewed 5/10/12 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 5/11/12

Double Hour (***1/4)

This quasi-romantic Italian thriller begins with a woman in a Turin hotel room. When the maid comes, the woman tells her to come in and makes a comment about her hair. But the guest, who commits suicide, is not the main character; the maid is. This minor deflection of our attention presages the plot as a whole, which begins with a meeting at a speed-dating session. The gentleman who most intrigues the woman, a security guard, seems kind but distant, and an unlikely tragedy seems to end the romance just as it begins. The unusual, contradictory events that follow are satisfactorily, yet unsatisfyingly, explained by a plot twist that may be guessed by some. And then there is a smart third act, which recontextualizes clues from the second. It becomes clear before then that we really don't know about either of these characters. And so the thrills exceed the romance. If it were a novel, it’d be a page turner, though.

IMDB link

viewed 5/24/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 5/25/11

Certified Copy (**1/4)

The minimalist Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami uses his first feature shot outside his home country to examine the meaning of “original” in art. One of the two main characters has written a book questioning why we want art to be original at all. If we like a painting, why does it matter if it is a duplicate? Discuss. And off we go as the English author (opera singer William Shimell) spends an afternoon with a French antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche), in Italy. The woman has a young son, who in one of the earliest scenes badgers his mother for french fries and generally tries to push her buttons as they sit down for a bite. Their conversation exhibits a playfulness nearly absent from the rest of the movie, which, plotwise, simply involves a man and a woman driving through Tuscany to a quaint town, walking, sitting, and, above all, talking.

Unlike many of Kiarostami’s other films, it isn’t quiet and contemplative. Binoche flutters effortlessly between French, Italian, and English, while Shimell has an easier time, as the author doesn’t speak Italian. Despite the location shooting, even the scenery takes a back seat to the dialogue. While they drive through the countryside, Kiarostami has the camera focused on the windshield with the lines on the road reflected between their faces, a metaphorical dividing line made literal.

The discussion of art flows into the personal, but in an abstract way. The last, I don’t know, 40 minutes of the movie are an extended extrapolation of a mildly amusing segment in which a café owner misunderstands the relationship between the two. This goes on far past the point where it would seem natural. Anyway, if you want to watch a couple of people have a pretend argument for half an hour, this may be your film. Maybe it’s a real argument along with the pretense, but it doesn’t matter. There is nothing that explains why these near-strangers who don’t seem to be having a good time together keep at it. If I were either one, I would’ve gotten in the car and driven back. Any movie is a pretense of reality, but this never lets you forget it.

IMDB link

viewed 10/16/10 at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/16?/10

La Nostra Vita (***1/4)

My Brother Is an Only Child director Daniele Luchetti returns with the story of a construction supervisor (Elio Germano, also of My Brother) whose wife suddenly dies in childbirth. Left alone with three sons, including a newborn, he pours his efforts into a large project meant to provide for his family but that instead threatens his financial ruin. Though this isn’t a dark film, it’s a realistic story about everyday struggle. The widowed father is, though likable, flawed, and the inequities of Italian society are a subtheme. Illegal immigrant laborers are used on the construction site, taxes are evaded, and casually derogatory references are made toward foreigners. Yet overall the movie takes a kind view of human nature; ultimately, it’s a story about values and relationships.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/20/10

I Am Love (**1/4)

The rich, wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different from you and me. Servants wait on them, they live on great estates, and they pass large fortunes on to their progeny. But their fears and desires are not unfamiliar. When an Italian patriarch makes a surprising choice as to who will succeed him as the head of the family-run textile business, we wonder if it will cause a rift. When the daughter of the family secretly confides to her mother than she is a lesbian, we wonder why it must be a secret. When the son ponders opening a restaurant with a new friend, we wonder if he’ll abandon his role in the business.

Don’t wonder too much, because the main subject of the movie is the mother, Emma, played by Tilda Swinton. Learning that her son’s friend is a cook, she takes an interest in the younger man. Swinton’s gifts apparently include speaking Italian with a Russian accent, as her character is an immigrant. (There is here the curiosity of having two native English speakers in significant roles, as Marissa Berenson plays Emma's sister-in-law.) In fact, the drama comes out of an earlier documentary director Luca Guadagnino did about the actress.

Guadagnino’s direction tends to draws attention to itself. At its best, his use of long shots, quiet, and ambient sounds emphasizes both the grandeur and the singularity of the family’s lifestyle. At other times, the use of unusual angles, odd close-ups, and jarring compositions by modern classical composer John Adams seems off-putting and pretentious.

Food lovers may enjoy the movie; it’s hard to say which is more pruriently displayed, the sins of the flesh or of the palate. The leisurely sex scene, intercut with shots of insect on flowers, gauzy shots of torsos, and closeups of skin, is positively operatic. On the other hand, a loving close-up of a seafood appetizer lasts so long that I thought there must be a secret message, written in balsamic vinegar, on the plate.

All in all, this was like a coproduction of Architectural Digest and Food & Wine. The characters seemed distant, like they were in a magazine. In the end, I felt a little like the diner given the seafood dish. It was beautiful to look at, but in the end you realize there are only three shrimp on the plate, and you are left in want of something more substantial.

IMDB link

viewed 7/7/10 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 7/11 and 8/3/10

Letters to Juliet (**1/2)

A charming, if imaginary custom, provides the excuse for a romantic tour of northern Italy in this bauble of a movie featuring young American Amanda Seyfried and veteran Brit Vanessa Redgrave as impromptu traveling companions. This would be in and around Verona, the town famous as the home of Shakespeare’s equally fictitious, if doomed, lovers. Doom is not the mood here, but the film shares the play’s idealization of true love. The younger woman, as aspiring writer, thinks she has already found hers in her fiancé (Gael Garcia Bernard).

But the older woman’s story is the heart of the romantic drama. Separated from her own young Romeo in 1957, she means to find him again. Only the notion that this long-lost gentleman might be found, might be alive, not decrepit, and single, and might indeed be her one true love can sustain the featherweight plot. And Redgrave, winsome as the starry-eyed but sensible heroine. The heroine has a grandson, too (Chris Egan, in a role that Hugh Grant might have played 20 years ago, had he been doing Hollywood fluff back then). He finds the American vulgar.

As with adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels, the movie is too busy throwing obstacles in the way of true love than exploring what love actually means. However, if this were based on one of those novels, like Dear John, which starred Seyfried, then most of the screen time would have been devoted to the separation, intervening relationships, and other ornate plot points. Sparks is the Bach of cornball romance novelists. Or maybe the Liberace. But here there are no fancy flashbacks, only backstory. It’s full of romantic comedy trappings—bold gestures, happy coincidences, “cute” misunderstandings, supportive secondary characters—only with less comedy. The first fifteen minutes of the movie, where the writer finds a 50-year-old letter and sets things in motion, is about the only time I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

Those who think the Sparks adaptation The Notebook was one of the most romantic movies ever will probably enjoy this, but find it a little lightweight by comparison. Those who thought that The Notebook was fake and trite may prefer this movie, which is certainly clichéed, but isn't pretentious.

IMDB link

viewed 4/8/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 5/16/10

Mid-August Lunch (**1/4)

The title suggests a nice, relaxed meal in pleasant company, and moreover a pleasant, light drama or comedy with no heavy themes, and that is what this aspires to be. Very Italian, with lots of casual wine sipping and a sprinkling of parmesan, it takes place when much of Rome seems to be on vacation. Meanwhile, middle-aged Gianni, who lives with his elderly mother, winds up being overnight host to multiple elderly women. They are all nice enough, though collectively a mild handful with their dietary restrictions, medications, and need for beds. Gianni is played by the director, Gianni Di Gregorio, who looks a lot like the late Jerry Orbach. Di Gregorio wrote the recent crime drama Gomorrah, among others, but apparently was looking for something less challenging for his directing debut.

I have no problem enjoying this sort of lightly plotted trifle, and this is certainly not unpleasant. But it’s so mild that it fails to make much of an impression. If this were actually something that happened to someone, it would make an amusing yarn, but a feature film seems a bit too much. Even if that movie takes merely the length of a leisurely lunch (75 minutes), viewers may be thinking that they’d prefer to spend that time eating the meal than watching it.

IMDB link

viewed 4/21/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/22/10

Nine (**3/4)

A look at the principal cast—Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman, Sophia Loren, Kate Hudson, and Fergie—might lead one to suspect that the title refers to how many Oscars they’ve collectively received, but that number is actually seven. (The late Anthony Mingella, who co-wrote the script, won one as a director.) The title is a play on 8½, the classic Federico Fellini film adapted first into an Italian play, then a 1982 Tony-winning musical with songs by Maury Yeston. There are a dozen songs, including three new ones by Yeston.

It took me ten minutes to recall that it was Day-Lewis in the role of Guido Contini, a great Italian director modeled on Fellini, and not some Italian actor. (He speaks English, like everyone else, but with an accent that even comes through when he sings.) Contini is a vastly popular figure who has, however, had a couple of recent flops and can’t come up with a story for his newest film, despite the fact that pre-production is already well under way. Cotillard has the second largest role as his sweet, cheated-upon wife. Writer’s block is the storyline, but the theme is all of the women in Contini’s life: his mother (Loren), his mistress (Cruz), his leading lady (Kidman), his costume designer (Dench), his childhood object of lust (Fergie), and an American journalist (Hudson). All of them appear in the first musical production, a fantasy sequence involving a bevy of skimpily clad women on what’s supposed to be a film set.

Nine follows the sci-fi films 9 and District 9 into theaters in ’09. It would be unfair and too easy to say that Nine is “by the numbers,” but the storyline feels overfamiliar, or at least the infidelity theme does. It is more correct to say that the film is “for the (musical) numbers,” which are elaborately staged and surprisingly well sung by the actors, who are generally not known for singing. Of course, Fergie is the exception, and belts out “Be Italian” with fervor. Yeston’s songs are wordy rather than clever or elegant, but are very descriptive of the storyline. A couple of them stuck in my head. All in all, though it might be obvious to say, this is a movie for lovers of big, fancily costumed musical production numbers. I am not such a person, but I still loved director Rob Marshall’s previous musical adaptation, Chicago. That was, in a way, just as much about moviemaking as this, since it was really a parody of a gangster movie, and the clever songs worked well with that kind of storytelling. Here the mixture of frothy production and serious themes tends to underscore how little is actually being said.

IMDB link

viewed 12/26/09 at Ritz East and reviewed 1/2/1o

My Brother Is an Only Child (***1/4)

For young Accio, as for so many, it’s lust that steers him away from seminary. Mildly reprimanded for having been caught masturbating, he regards the episode not so much as a personal failing as a failure of the church to stamp out his desire. And so he searches for another ideology worthy of his allegiance, and finds…fascism. It is small-town Italy, nearly two decades after Il Duce’s fall, and this puts him at odds with his communist-leaning siblings and his working-class parents, who long for the new house the ruling party has promised to build them. Accio’s nickname means “bully,” but mostly he comes in for beatings at the hands of his older brother.

Skipping from 1962 to roughly a decade later, this adaptation of a novel follows Accio’s struggles with desire and ideology, which come into conflict when he meets his brother’s girlfriend. Part coming-of-age story, part dysfunctional family tale, it’s a colorful, nearly comic film quite different from Hollywood fare, but one that‘s nonetheless fairly accessible. It’s much more the story of a small-town family than a political movie—ideological differences aside, neither brother's politics appear too sophisticated. Yet the idea that such people even have political views would be unusual for an American film. The zigzagging plot’s conclusion is a reminder that it doesn’t always require sophistication to effect change.

IMDB link

viewed 5/14/08; reviewed 5/16/08

Golden Door (***1/4)

This movie is a story of immigration, told by following a peasant who travels to Ellis Island with his mother and sons. Salvatore is a widower, living in a craggy village in Sicily; like every other Italian we see in the movie, he speaks no English. He is illiterate. With (literal) visions of money growing on trees, he heads off to America, envisioning immense vegetables growing in the fertile soil. But these fantasies are as romantic as the film gets; in many ways what it made me think of was a sort of anti-Titanic. In that film, poor boy Leo DeCaprio stows away; we don’t see him stuffed like a sardine into the cots provided to the third-class passengers here. We also don’t see what would have awaited him had he made it to Ellis Island. He’d have been examined for defects mental and physical, and deported if found wanting. The Kate Winslet figure, an Englishwoman mysteriously traveling on a boat full of Italians, is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Well-dressed, carrying herself with a slightly regal air, and traveling alone, she’s the object of much speculation among the other passengers. But she too will be turned away unless she can find someone to marry her.

And there I’ve told you 80% of the plot. If a fast-paced story or conventional romance is what you’re looking for, this movie may bore you. Precise detail, from the smudged clothing and dark fingernails of the emigrants to their assembly-line processing at the end of their trip, is the movie’s forte. Writer-director Emanuele Crialese spent a year researching Ellis Island and poring over the letters of the people who passed through there. He tells the story without sentimentality, though not without tenderness. The camera work eshews grand vistas for carefully framed shots of people in close quarters. There is only a little music. The result provides a better look than any text book at what it must have been like to leave everything you’ve known and go somewhere new, what it was like to become American.